Tim Duncan tells of strange happenings at haunted hotel

Tim Duncan looks like he just saw a ghost, but actually he's just gesturing during a recent game.

Tim Duncan looks like he just saw a ghost, but actually he's just gesturing during a recent game. (Jose Luis Villegas / MCT)

Houston Mitchell

The NBA just found its perfect matchup for next Halloween: San Antonio at Golden State. Just don't expect Tim Duncan and Jeff Ayres to play, because they are convinced the hotel they stay at when they play the Warriors is haunted.

The Spurs were in Oakland last weekend to play the Warriors and stayed at the Claremont Resort. According to local history, the Claremont Resort is haunted by a 6-year-old girl who died in the hotel.

After checking in, Ayres and Duncan made their way to their respective rooms, which were next to each other.

"I took my room key," Ayres told the San Antonio Express News. "I could hear stuff in the hallway, like people in their rooms. So I’m thinking people are watching TV or whatever. So I get to my door, and my key doesn’t work, but it sounds like there’s somebody in my room. Like I hear a little baby, not crying but making noise. I’m like, ‘What the heck?’ I keep trying my key and it doesn’t work. So I go downstairs to get a new key, and I tell them somebody’s in the room.

“So they call the room, and nobody answers. They’re like, ‘We can get you a new key and send you up with security and make sure nobody’s there, because there shouldn’t be anybody in there.’ Then they’re like, ‘We’ll just get you a new room.’ It was the creepiest thing. I heard a couple of other guys heard babies in the hallway, kids running down the hallway. Creepy. I really heard voices and a baby in the room, and there wasn’t anybody in there. It was crazy.”

Duncan agrees. "I heard a baby in his room. There was somebody or something in his room, yeah. I definitely heard something. It wasn’t creepy, because I assumed it was really somebody in the room, and they gave him the wrong room. But when they told me the story the next day about calling up there and no one in the room, it’s at that point you get chills. I’d rather not stay there again.”

Perhaps if they had looked a little closer, they would have seen Rod Serling standing in a corner. Or Harold Ramis. Or maybe the hotel decided to have a little fun at the players' expense while adding credence to the haunted legend.

By the way, it didn't affect their game, as the Spurs defeated the Warriors, 99-90. You could say that Golden State didn't have a ghost of a chance.